Lines of Communication
by Snapdragon83
Summary: Rich Dotcom gives Jane advice (and encouragement) on her relationship with Kurt from afar. AU after 1x18.


I do not own Blindspot or its characters.

* * *

She received the first postcard ten days after Rich Dotcom made his spectacular swan dive off the roof, escaping without a trace despite Allie's relentless pursuit.

"Hey, Jane," Zapata commented as the team stepped off the elevator into the bullpen, "looks like you're officially one of us, now. You've got mail."

"What?" Jane looked toward her desk and was startled to see a white rectangle sitting squarely in the middle of the otherwise barren surface. The FBI had assigned her the space weeks ago, shortly after she had been cleared to work with the team, but she had never bothered to make it her own.

There was no point; no matter how much she might wish it otherwise, she would never truly be one of them. Each day that passed made her more painfully aware that her time with these people was limited, that no matter how strong the bonds she formed with them, one day she was going to have to say goodbye. One day, they would solve her case or move on to another, and she would be left to pick up the pieces once more.

And so, she never bothered to add any personal touches to her space. No photos of herself with the team (or Weller in particular), no little knickknacks, not even pen or paper to write with. She would leave just as she had arrived: emptyhanded.

Well, not quite as she had arrived, she amended. When that time came, unlike before, she would have her memories, remembrances that she stored away each day to treasure long after their time together had come to an end. She already knew she would never forget any of them. Just as she would never stop loving Kurt.

Her breath caught in her throat as she drew near enough to read the words scrawled on the postcard. _Have you told him yet?_

 _Damn you, Oscar_ , she thought furiously as the others approached to see what she'd gotten. Their relationship had been increasingly rocky of late—he pressing her to get closer to Weller, to fabricate recollections of being Taylor Shaw, and she steadfast in her refusal to do so, in her inability to use his feelings for his childhood friend to draw him deeper into whatever this web was she'd apparently helped create—but she'd never thought he'd resort to something like this. Never thought he'd risk blowing both their covers to get his point across.

The two of them were going to have to have a serious talk tonight.

She turned the postcard over before the team could see what it said, and her anger vanished in an instant, a very startled and slightly relieved chuckle bursting forth from her as she took in the image—and the caption—on the front.

Rich Dotcom and his art-forger boyfriend were curled up together in a lounge chair on a nondescript beach, smiling as if they hadn't a care in the world. (And they probably didn't, Jane reflected, with the money they had likely made from the sale of those re-stolen paintings. Especially if Boston Arliss Crab had made one—or several—forgeries of each.) The caption was a reiteration of his last words to her before his escape: _Life Is Short._

Tasha doubled over with laughter as she realized who had sent the postcard and what it referenced. "Yeah, Jane, have you told him yet?" she gasped out when she could draw breath to speak.

Reade simply shook his head at her merriment and the ensuing cause, but Weller was more proactive. "Jane." He motioned for her to lay the card back down on her desk. "You probably shouldn't handle that any more. It's evidence." Fingerprints would be useless, since the sender was obvious, and he doubted they would be able to discern Rich's location from that photo, but he knew Allie would try her darndest regardless.

"Oh, right." Jane flushed. "Sorry."

The team dispersed then, Reade and Zapata making plans to have a drink together before heading home and Weller going off to round up Patterson to analyze the postcard and no doubt call his girlfriend to fill her in on the potential break in the case.

Jane glanced back down at the postcard and was flooded with sadness as she recognized the truth of its words. Life _was_ short. She knew that better than anybody, having only a few weeks of solid memories and a handful of uncomfortable flashbacks. If she had learned one thing in that brief time, it was that anything could happen to anyone at any time.

Rich was right. She needed to come clean to Kurt. Not about her feelings—she could never do that—but about everything else. He was happy with Allie, and she was happy for him. Happy and unaccountably sad all at the same time. It _was_ too complicated for them to have made a go of it, but that didn't stop her from wondering, _What if?_

What if she had gone straight back to Kurt's apartment the night Carter had abducted her, the night she had kissed him, and come clean with him then and there? Told him that she was not a victim as they'd all believed, but a potential conspirator? She hadn't been able to bear the thought that he might look at her differently, but she bitterly regretted her cowardice now.

What if she had met him at the park that night as he had requested? She knew good and well he had been there, contrary to what he had told her. He was too much of a Boy Scout to stand a woman up.

What if, what if, what if . . . They were the stuff of her nightmares, but one in particular haunted even her waking moments. _What if I had told Kurt the truth before we chased this lead? Would he still be dead if he'd had all the information?_

Could her desire to protect him ultimately lead to his demise?

Her anger had faded with the realization that Oscar hadn't left the postcard, but the fear generated by that possibility still lingered. She knew next to nothing about the organization that he worked for—that _she_ ostensibly worked for—and it wasn't unreasonable to think that a group who had the resources to tattoo a woman, wipe her memory, and deliver her to the FBI to further their own ends would have a plan in place to contact her even in that very building if the need arose.

And if they could do that, if they could get to her _here_ , in one of the most secure buildings in New York, waltz past the layers of security in the building and walk unescorted into the bullpen that was Weller's home base . . .

They could get to any of them.

It was time to tell Kurt the truth.

xxx

She received the first email two weeks after she came clean with Kurt.

The fact that Rich had obtained her email address was no surprise—he was a world-class hacker, after all—but she was surprised at its content. Somehow he had learned of her talk with Kurt, learned that Kurt had taken the news so badly that he would no longer speak to her, could barely look at her, and took it upon himself to try to comfort her.

 _Don't worry, Janie; you did the right thing. Everything will be all right; you'll see. Cousin Stu will come around._

 _P.S. Makeup sex is the best kind!_

She laughed in spite of the ache in her heart as she read his words over for a second time, but she had little hope of their coming true. The anger on Kurt's face as her words sank in, the pain in his voice . . . it would haunt her to her dying day. He'd informed the team the following day, but facing their disbelief and distrust and scorn was a cakewalk after witnessing his reaction to her confession.

Patterson had been the first to befriend her again, her naturally sunny nature unable to hold a grudge, and the two of them had laughed and cried together as they hugged, Jane apologizing repeatedly for David's death and Patterson waving every one of them aside. She was equally at fault, she assured Jane, for taking her work home where David could see it and not doing more to discourage his interest in the case.

Surprisingly enough, Reade had been the second to come around to her side. He knew firsthand what it felt like to have loved ones in the crosshairs of this group, and once his anger had cooled enough for his analytical side to take over, he shared with her the threats they had made against Sarah and Sawyer, commiserated with her over the tough choice she had been forced to make. It warmed her aching heart slightly to hear him commend the courage it had taken her to come forward.

She never did find out what made Zapata thaw towards her, though she strongly suspected Reade and Patterson had tag-teamed her, but she came into work one morning and Tasha resumed speaking to her just as she always had.

Kurt, though . . .

Jane sighed as she closed her email and returned her focus to the tattoo on her computer screen. It was after seven on a Friday night, and she knew she should go home, but she couldn't bring herself to face that empty safe house again just yet. Somehow its walls had come to feel just as constricting to her as she imagined prison bars would.

Perhaps she would just spend the night here; she had a spare set of clothes in her locker, after all.

"Jane."

For a moment she thought she'd imagined the voice, she'd dreamed so long of Kurt saying her name as he had before, without the hard edge of anger in his voice, but when she looked up, he was standing less than three feet from her, his blue eyes soft but wary. "Hey," she greeted him in return. "I thought you'd gone home."

"I started to," Kurt admitted, "but then I decided to go out for a drink first, and I remembered I still owed you one for your—I still owed you one," he amended hastily. He had strong doubts now that she was Taylor, which meant her birthday was as much a mystery as everything else about her, and he had banished his father from his home and his life once more, much to Sarah's disappointment. She still believed their father was innocent of any wrongdoing in Taylor's disappearance.

"You don't owe me anything, Kurt," Jane assured him.

"I do," Kurt told her. "I owe you an apology. I was so angry that my instincts about you might have been wrong, that Taylor might really be . . ." He couldn't bring himself to say _dead_ , and he continued on after a long moment. "I took that anger out on you, and I'm really sorry, Jane."

He held out a hand to her. "Let me make it up to you. Please?"

It was the pleading look in his eyes as much as the _please_ that did her in. Jane rose and placed her hand in his, feeling unaccountably certain as he interlaced their fingers that Rich was right and everything would work out just as it was supposed to.

xxx

She received the first phone call two months after she and Kurt started dating.

Not that either of them defined it as that, at first.

They had talked well into the night that evening he had asked her out for a drink, opting for the privacy of his apartment rather than the local bar down the street, and she had fallen asleep on the couch in the wee hours of the morning. Their conversation had continued when they awoke the next morning and by the time Kurt dropped her off at her safe house late in the afternoon, they had made significant inroads into repairing their relationship.

She had been stunned to learn he and Allie had broken up weeks earlier, and when he began inviting her out for drinks after work on a semi-regular basis, she had no hesitation in accepting. Gradually, that expanded to include dinner several times a week, game nights with Sawyer when Kurt was watching him, and weekend outings to various landmarks around the city.

They grew more and more comfortable with one another during those excursions, holding hands more often than not (ostensibly to keep track of one another in the crowded throng), but it wasn't until a man began hitting on Jane at their favorite bar when Kurt stepped away to get them a second round of drinks that they put a label on their relationship.

Kurt had come back to their table to find the intoxicated man chatting up a visibly uncomfortable Jane and immediately snapped at him to get the hell away from his girlfriend. The onlookers, their surroundings, everything else ceased to exist as their eyes met and their lips came together in the kiss both had had been dreaming of since the last one.

That had been more than a month ago, and Jane hadn't spent a night at her safe house since. She pulled back from Kurt's arms now, shifting so she could watch him, smiling when he grumbled in his sleep and automatically reached for her. She was just about to slide back into his arms when the phone rang and she quickly rolled over to answer it before it woke him, hoping against hope that it wasn't Mayfair. Their relationship wasn't technically against the rules, since she was a consultant rather than an agent, but they both preferred to keep their relationship out of the office. At least for now.

"Hello?" she murmured quietly.

"Janie!" Rich greeted. "I just knew you'd be there. How was the make-up sex? Was it as hot as I envisioned?"

"Rich. Turn yourself in and we can talk about it," she offered coyly. Not that she would ever actually follow through with it.

Rich laughed. "Thanks, but no. The sex in prison is just too vanilla for me. But if you and Stubbles ever need to spice things up a little, just let me know, and I'll arrange a weekend rendezvous." He hung up before she could even begin to formulate a response to that.

"Jane?" Kurt propped himself up one elbow and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Well after midnight. Who would be calling at that hour? "Who was that?"

"A friend," she said quietly. "Just a friend."

xxx

She received the first visit on her wedding day.

She and Kurt had been dating for nearly two years when he proposed. They had planned the wedding quickly, neither of them wanting to wait a second longer than necessary to be a family once they had made the decision to do so, and she kept her eyes locked on Kurt's as she made her way down the aisle to him to pledge him her life and love.

She barely remembered a word of the ceremony, but the look on Kurt's face as they said their vows would stay with her forever.

As would one other moment.

As they walked back down the aisle as husband and wife, she glanced up into the church balcony and saw Rich standing there. He raised a champagne flute in a silent toast to them as their eyes met, and she smiled slightly as she dipped her head in acknowledgment.

She never mentioned his presence to Kurt.

Some secrets were worth keeping, after all.


End file.
